Sourdough in a cold temperature
I am in London (England) and to keep bills under control my flat is not heated during the day. The temperature in the kitchen is around 19C (66F). My starter is made up with 50% plain flour 50% wholemeal rye. It never doubles . I would say it rises by 33% on a good day. I feed daily, by removing 50% of the levain and replacing with about same/ 150% volume of fresh flour and about same volume of tap water as flour. So about 1:1.5:1.5
My go to recipe is:
Night before baking, I take 2-3 tablespoons of starter, add to 260 ml tepid water and then 150g of flour ( usually 100g white high protein canadian plus 50g wholemeal rye), whisk it altogether.
Next morning, add 250g white canadian bread flour, knead 5 mins, rest 10 minutes. Add i tsp salt and knead again 5 minutes. Shape, do 4 stretch and folds at 1/2 hour interval. Then leave to rise about 2 hours.
De-gas, leave to rise 1-2 hours. Put in fridge overnight, about 12 hours.
bake in Dutch oven 20 minutes at 240 degree C. Then reduce to 200C. Remove lid in last 20 minutes, total bake about 1 hour.
here are my latest efforts.
the first one actually rose quite well during bulk fermentation, the starter was reasonably lively by my standards but tragically I think I over proofed.
the second one- well words fail me.
Ok that cavernous one is the second bake.
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The second pic I presume is overproofed- I left it about 18 hours in the fridge at 5C.
need to do a few experiments
take some of your ripest starter and feed 1/.5/.5 and place into a tall narrow jar/glass and just let it rise until it peaks. How long does it take? Use warm bath temp water when feeding. Are you home during the day or working?
What happens when the dough is not retarded in the fridge?
Is your starter relatively new? Mine never really got going until I bought a seed starting mat and put the container on it. With the additional warmth, it really took off. I got mine online for under $20. You can also use it for proofing (although you might want to put a bowl or something between the mat and your proofing container so the bottom of the loaf doesn’t get overheated).
I agree with Mini. Cut your feeding to 1:0.5:0.5. Colder temps will take longer to reach maturity.
Do a 1:0.5:0.5 feeding and let it go until it peaks even if that takes more than a day.
Thank you for your comments. I must say I thought you were going to tell me to put a greater volume of flour and water to starter, but you are saying the opposite! I work from home so am usually in. Hadn’t thought of a seed mat. That’s an interesting idea. Mini, the idea of putting the jar of starter I n a warm water bath- is that just when you are mixing it up?
in a warm water bath, although it might help, use a thermos too and it might be even better. What I meant was that instead of using tepid water, use warm water when feeding the starter. If you can't hold your hand in the water, it is too hot.
It is true that larger feeds help build yeast especially if your starter is tasting very sour. Taste your starter before feeding it. If it tastes like wet flour, it needs to ferment longer before feeding it.
You can rigg a pocket inside your vest or sweater to hold your starter at your body temperature. This will also help the starter grow more yeasts.
I always retard in the fridge, partly because it holds its shape when transferring to the Dutch oven and is easy to score, and I think I got better loaves too ( but can’t be sure about that, I started doing it a few years ago).
with feeding to the temperatures and seasons using more starter in the bread recipe in the colder winter months and less in the summer.
I notice a mistake in my opening paragraph. I create the sponge in the morning, not the night before. I mix starter, flour and water at around 9am then add rest of flour and knead at about 3:30 pm.
I started baking sourdough in November, and the second picture you posted is exactly how my first ~10 loaves came out. I also keep my house around 18-19°C.
I am but a beginner but I finally resolved my problem, and maybe you are experiencing the same issue.
In my case, my starter was simply not healthy enough. When you add rye flour, you will get an immediate response in rise/fall of the starter. But this rise, I suspect, is caused by the bacteria rather than the yeast, especially considering your room temperature. I too was using a 1:1:1 feeding ratio, believing that retaining more of the cultured yeast would result in a stronger starter, but for reasons that are beyond my understanding, using smaller ratios such as 1:2:2 and 1:5:5 seem to result in a stronger yeast population. I believe that many people have no issues with their starters because they have temperature on their side. But we have to do things a little differently when our environment is below 22°C.
To fix my issue, I switched to 50/50 APF/Whole Wheat for feedings and went from 1:1:1, 1:2:2, 1:3:3 and finally 1:5:5 over the course of seven days. Pay close attention to the rise and fall. You will want to feed the starter once it just starts to fall. It seems that allowing it to fall completely will adversely affect the yeast population. Now that it is behaving predictably, I can use different ratios depending on when I want the peak to occur, to better time it for when I will be making bread.
While it's true that a slow starter will simply take longer to rise a dough, that added time can negatively impact the gluten network and result in a slack dough that won't hold its shape. So I think it's important to have a fairly balanced starter in terms of LAB/AAB/Yeast.
Check out these videos from Tom @ The Sourdough Journey. The first video is the one I fell upon that convinced me to try and strengthen my starter, which ultimately fixed my issue completely.
YouTube: How to Strengthen a Weak Starter
YouTube: How to DOUBLE Your Starter Strength in 6 Days (or Less!)
I hope this might help you. Best of luck!
PS:
Here are some examples of how my starter looked before. It had plenty of rise, but no gas pockets to speak of, despite being 100% hydration. This, I suspect, is because the gluten was being broken down.
Resulting loaf:
And my starter now, after strengthening effort, also 100% hydration:
Thank you Mark, these really clear explanations and the great photos really help bring the message home, especially the effect of temperature on bacteria vs yeasts and the importance of seeing those bubbles in the starter. I have lots of. “Pinhead” bubbles but none of those glorious big gaps, unless it’s summer. I believe from your profile you are in Canada? The fact that you have a managed it in a cold climate gives me hope. I’ll crack on with a 1:2:2 regime and ramp it up if it goes well and hope to bake on Monday or Tuesday. Will let you know how it goes.
Glad to help. Something I forgot to mention, is that I was using only unbleached bread flour in my starter before. I know that a lot of people do this with good results, but it never worked well for me. When I first started the new "regime", I started using 10% whole rye (in addition to the bread flour). It seemed to help, but it wasn't until I went to 50% whole wheat that I saw a huge uptick in the activity. Tartine says on their website that they use a 50/50 WW/APF blend for their starter. And with the small amount of starter used to make a loaf, you can still make all-white bread without the starter really affecting your blend, or you could always make an all-white leaven. Just thought I'd mention it.
Good luck!
Thanks Mark, something to experiment with. Most sites seem to sing the praises of rye organic but I will also give wholemeal wheat a try.
Just reporting back. I have been binge watching Tom Cucuzza’s videos. Thanks Mark for reminding me about them. I have been doing daily 1:1:1 feedings and the starter is 100% healthier now. It is doming in 12 hours so I have moved to a twice a day feed. I baked a few days ago but broke one of Mr Cucuzza’s cardinal rules by mashing up 2 different recipes, my usual River Cottage sourdough (which involves making a sponge with 150g flour and 260g water) and then doing the Tartine method the next day. The dough was over hydrated and possibly overproved. Still I was excited because it had great distribution of air holes and a lovely taste. The starter is also smelling quite different now with regular feeds ( I use 50% plain white flour and 50% wholemeal) ie milder, less vinegary. I am going to keep up the regular feeds, make a leaven Sunday evening and aim to make the bread on Monday. Here are some pics.
I'm happy to hear that you're getting improving results. 12 hours for a 1:1:1 to peak indicates to me that it may still have some room for growth. If I do a 1:1:1 I will typically see full rise by about 8 hours, though my house is more around 20°C these days with sun finally starting to shine. If you want, you could try for even more horsepower by doing some 1:2:2 feeds or even 1:3:3. I think you might be able to squeeze even more out of it and get better bread as a result.
Another tip that several people on this forum recommended is the use of an aliquot jar. Basically any straight-walled jar that is small will do. I use a spice jar. You basically pinch off a small piece of dough and put it in the jar, put a piece of tape on it and mark the starting height. This lets you monitor the progress of the bulk fermentation visually by its height. One of my most repeated mistakes was over-proofing my dough. Now I shoot for 30-40% growth and then shape it, put in banneton, and into the fridge. Even now, the dough always looks like it's not ready to my eyes, but it ends up blowing up in the bake, so I trust the method more than my own judgement.
In the picture below, you can see my marks. The lowest line was the starting point, the line at the top I marked as approximately 100%, and of course the dot represents 50%. (All rough estimates done by eye.) You can see the dough here is way past 100%, and that's simply because I forgot the jar after I baked the loaf, but I shaped it when it was getting close to the 50% mark, and that has been working well for me so far. Maybe this will help you.
Apologies the site doesn’t seem to be allowing me to post pics. I will keep trying.
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So this was a 1:1:1 feeding?
Assuming that the elastic was your start point, it looks like it in the pic it is levelled at about 110%. Did it rise all the way to the top and fall back down to this point? Did it look different at the half way point?
My concern is that there is no sign of any big bubbles. It's hard to know from just that one pic if it was shot way past 100% and has fallen back down or if it is currently at its peak in the picture. But I looks like it may be hungry.
Sorry, double post ...
Thanks for these great tips and the encouragement Mark. I agree you can’t see a lot of bubbles on the side. The view looking down into the starter does show a good amount of bubbles. There must be some aeration going on as it is now more than doubling in size in 8-12 hours. I will try feeding more volume of flour to starter- although I slightly feel I am becoming a slave to a bunch of single-celled organisms! I am running out of jars to store the discard until I can put them in the bin on bin day.
I am staring a Tartine loaf today, doing enough for 1 loaf with 450g of flour , keeping all the ratios as per original recipe. I will try the aliquot jar trick, after first stretch and fold. Will put up a picture tomorrow no matter what the results look like.
To answer your question re the rising, I think that was the summit for the starter, or near enough.
Ok, here is a picture of the latest loaf, made using Tartine method with the starter fed at 1:1:1 for about 5 days. Doubling in 8-12 hours. I bulk fermented for 6 hours, kitchen is cold (20-21C) and for the last 2-3 hours I put it in a switched off oven at 24C. I also did the aliquot jar and the sample only rose by about 15-20% in that time. Although after 8 hours it doubled, so it gathered speed in the last 2 hours. However I didn’t want to extend BF to 8 hours as I worried it would be very overproved. I put in fridge for about 12 hours after bench rest of 1/2 hour.
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Wow, that's a huge improvement! The crumb looks fantastic. 8-12 hour peak for a 1:1:1 is a pretty wide range, but say we use 8 hours, I believe you can squeeze even more efficiency out of that starter. I have seen 1:1:1 peak at about 5-6 hours at about 20° using 50% whole wheat 50% bread flour.
Did you score the loaf?
Isn't it a great feeling when you focus effort on something specific and immediately see improvement?
Thanks Mark for your encouragement.
I did score the loaf, and I’m using 50% white all purpose organic and 50% wholemeal organic for the starter. Still nurturing that starter. It can be a bit erratic eg rise very quickly one day (doubling in 4 hours) and a lot more slowly the next.
I made another loaf this week but tried to run before I could walk. To try and enhance the rise I kneaded the dough for 5 minutes after adding the salt, and extended bulk fermentation to about 7 hours. I probably also used too much starter in the leaven. This resulted in an overproved loaf which didn’t rise well and had no ear despite scoring. Still , it made a decent sandwich for my hike yesterday. At least I now understand the reasons for a less than perfect loaf. The Tom Cucuzza videos have been extremely helpful. I’m going to bake again in Tuesday and will post the results.